Wednesday, August 03, 2011

FCKH8 Video rocks, bad article written about video, friend with cancer

The new video from the folks who did the hilarious FCKH8 campaign against California's Prop 8 is for Minnesota's own straights-only marriage amendment, cruising to a heavy loss in 2012.

These always make me cry, it's so beautiful the pride and sillyness and anger and positive energy that comes out of here. It's to the point, powerful, makes people stand up and take note.



Unfortunately I found out about this at the worst article I've ever seen at the Minnesota Independent, which has routinely been awesome sauce for left wing politics. Andy Birkey there has been great with Bradlee Dean stories, relentless and original reporting about Michelle Bachmann. And then he pops up with a story that says "Radical Gay Video Hated by Right Wing and Left" (specifically, Minnesota Family Council, LGBT Activists Pan FCKH8 video)

So much wrong - I wonder if he wrote the headline.

First, neutralize the radicals is the first step in the right-wing plan to break up our social movements (us, the good guys). Toxic Sludge is Good For You lays out the plan that ad agencies pitch to industries facing attacks (such as the beef industry for bad beef in hamburgers). Basically, they say "demonize the radicals, co-opt the moderates, and try to get the amoral power-freaks to take over" (this last see Norm Coleman.)

This takes all the energy out of the sails, and shifts the frame of the debate to the right. You will notice the Right uses their crazies to move further to the right all the time, while the left is too busy shoving the radicals down the hatch (ACORN, anarchists at free trade events, socialists in the labor movement in the 50s, etc.)

Second, it's the "false equivalence" dodge that the Right uses to force debate to the right. "Both sides use violent imagery" was said after Gabrielle Giffords was shot - when the actual evidence is the Right used huge amounts of way more violent imagery and messaging (and in Rand Paul's case, attacks on people) and historically (lynching, the Klan, the Know Nothings, etc) they do too.

Third, it's not even true. The folks from Minnesotans United For All Families don't throw FCKH8 under the bus at all - they just say it's an outside group, their message isn't about hate, and then they repeat their preferred framing. (Exactly what they should do.)

This, by the way, is the Minnesotans United message. Repeated because it's a good message.

“We are talking about love and commitment not hate. Hate has nothing to do with this, but love and commitment do because that’s what marriage is. It’s the definition of what marriage is.”

And then they find a blogger who says 'those crazy faggots went too far' and bada-bing, one activist (who I know nothing about, he might be cool otherwise) becomes all LGBT activists in the headline.

So anyway, totally read the Minnesota Independent; it's great reporting. But send Andy and/or his editors an email asking them about this post.

(Oh, and a good friend of mine just had a recurrence of cancer, so I'm bummed about that too. That would be the Facebook part of me putting the personal in the post.)

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